The ballad of a former country rocker in flight from his shadows, ALT. COUNTRY tracks the legend of Harvey Kooper: oaken-voiced troubadour, suburban mystic, romantic fuck-up. Haunted by the regrets of a lifetime, he runs from near-fame, leads spiritual fasts in the San Fernando Valley ("Country Music's Salinger," a bartender calls him), finds Jesus, marries a radio host who spins musical dreams of forgotten pasts--and then recreates all the chaos and grief he had tried to break free of. Meanwhile he is shadowed by a faded, possibly delusional, Rolling Stone reporter who believes that the hero's slide toward noble obscurity in the heat of the culture wars is a story for our times.
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